Tom Wilhite, who owns and operates Wilhite Auto Service just a few yards west of the city’s railroad tracks, knows about train horn noise all too well.
“It blows out the shop when they come by here,” he said. “I just have to stop talking to people a lot of times.” As if to reinforce that point, an interview with an Informer reporter was interrupted by the sound of a loud train horn blasted several times.
Wilhite is not alone. There have been complaints and comments about the frequent sounds of the horns blown by train engineers as they past through town.
And there are a lot of trains, too, or about 34 a day, sometimes several each hour during a busy period.
Of course, nothing can be done about the sound of a train itself, but it’s the horns that get under the skin of many people. However, the engineers are just following the law as the Federal Railroad Administration set rules regarding the use of horns at rail crossings in 2007.
But it also included provisions for the creation of what are called “quiet zones,” wherein a city could follow certain guidelines and eliminate the mandated horn sounding.
With that in mind, Derby officials wanted to know more about a quiet zone.
(Read more: Derby News | derbyinformer.com)